Ticketing structure in the Economic Crisis

Since late 2007, the country has been in the middle of an economic crisis, no thanks to the incompetence’s of the very man who promised to abolish the economic cycle of “boom and bust”, but in this time where consumers have very little disposable income, the approach of football clubs have been very interesting. Some have placed its fans first, and have reduced prices. An example of this would be Bradford City, who I believe offered season tickets for £99 for the 08/09 season – meaning they got in excess of 10,000 season tickets sold. There are further examples of this, with clubs such as Mansfield this season offering reductions “if 3,000 people sign up”, and even Simon Jordan has come up with a remarkably good ticket offer, which equates to 12 games for just over £50 for a student like me. However, this is a difficult time for the clubs too – and several teams are suffering extreme financial problems, Palace are just about avoiding that category right now, but who knows what might happen if Jordan fails to find a buyer. So they can’t just completely slash prices, it simply wouldn’t make sense. Season tickets, and tickets in general, are the biggest form of income for virtually all clubs below the very big teams which command huge transfer fee’s/sell the most merchandise ala Man United. Indeed, as a half way house if you like, many clubs are “freezing” season ticket prices, meaning this season’s prices are the same as last time out. They get praised for doing this – but should they be? People, on general have less money now than they did a year, so you could say freezing prices is actually a negative move. Furthermore, I would agree it would be a positive, helpful move if any of the “big” teams – aka those who would sell all their season tickets with ease – froze prices, but when teams that are midtable championship/league 1 standard freeze prices, it’s not as though they would get an economical advantage from raising prices anyway and thus it’s not that “generous a gesture”, as some sections of the media portray it.Obviously season tickets are the main source of revenue for a club like Palace – and at the moment we sell about 10,000 in the championship. I have no doubt that we would be able to sell at least 15,000 given a more reasonable price, and so I don’t think we are at our equilibrium price if you see what I mean. For example, an “early bird” ticket in the Holmesdale lower, where most of the noisier supporters sit, costs £315. If that was reduced to say £250, I think we would see an increase in tickets bought that would excel the cost for the club of reducing the prices.Furthermore, for me, the “on the door”, prices at most teams in championship level at least are absolutely barmy. Apparently Palace were making fans pay £15 for a friendly recently – surely that should have been free, for ST holders at least. But anyway, you would have thought that if the current prices were dropped to say £20 for an adult and £10 for a child, it would not only get more people into the ground, but it would also contribute to a better atmosphere and most importantly, it would get more fans to come back to games and sign up for season tickets in the future.Of course there are some people that aren’t going to be interested in watching championship football, but I think the current ticketing structure we have at the Palace means that we don’t get as many fans to games as we could do, which is a shame. However, this isn’t something that’s just affecting Palace – teams like Millwall, albeit in league 1, are getting average attendances of around 10,000 which is terrible for a club like that – and generally attendances are down in recent seasons.But is it all about the money? I think it’s a cliché to say this, but the crowd often can be the “12th man” – and would Stoke have got as many points at home this season, had they been playing at a half empty ground, with very little atmosphere? I personally doubt it. Yes the aim of a football chairman is to progress a club as far as possible, but they also need to make money for themselves. However often they can’t see that by dropping prices, they are actually increasing revenue in the long term, which is a shame. Indeed for many chairman, they are operating in a far shorter time frame than in is ideally needed.Consider my local team Stevenage Borough. At the moment they get an average attendance of around 2,000 – of which I believe 500ish are season ticket holders. If Phil Wallace was to sell season tickets for £100, there is a huge amount of “occasional fans” that go to teams like Borough, and I reckon they could easily sell 3,000 + season tickets if prices were really exceptional. This would get more and more people associated with the club, and it would provide long term benefits with it.In conclusion, obviously chairman need to keep ticket prices reasonable, and it’s impossible to reduce them to ridiculous prices – as that wouldn’t keep the clubs financially secure. However, I think there are several teams, at this time at least, that could benefit from following the lead of teams like Bradford and Mansfield, by reducing season ticket prices – or providing incentives for signing up. A team like Palace could easily be getting far more than 14,000 to games in this division and lower prices would help achieve this. In a time where people have little or no money to spend on entertainment – e.g. football, door to door prices of £30 for a championship matches are crazy – and I hope that Jordan has realised, and continues to realise, that he needs to something about the prices, or our average attendances will continue to fall – especially given our poor end to last season